Beale markets Canadian pride to the world

As a young apprentice tool designer at the old ITL plant on Windsor's west side, Mike Beale would sit at his drawing board and ache with envy while watching the company's sales hotshots head out to pitch its products.

The Great Canadian Flag Project, which includes Michael Beale (L) and Peter Hrastovec, will be seeking final city council approval to erect a giant Canadian Maple Leaf flagpole at the foot of Ouellette Avenue on Windsor's waterfront. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

As a young apprentice tool designer at the old ITL plant on Windsor’s west side, Mike Beale would sit at his drawing board and ache with envy while watching the company’s sales hotshots head out to pitch its products.

The design work was interesting but Beale knew, deep in his guts, that he possessed the high-octane energy and fiery competitive instincts to be someone who could go out and seal the deal.

Luckily for Windsor, Beale followed his heart and landed a sales job with a Detroit-area tooling firm that he parlayed into his own sales, engineering and marketing company. He spent fun years travelling the world “introducing companies to the tooling industry” while indulging a race-car passion that saw him inhaling the exhaust fumes of Sir Stirling Moss and other racing legends.

I say luckily for Windsor, because those same sales instincts were on display in council chambers this week as Beale and lawyer Peter Hrastovec led a delegation that secured unanimous council approval to erect a giant Canadian flag in Dieppe Gardens. As someone who couldn’t sell boyscout movie night tickets to his own parents, I’ve always marveled at the polished audacity of those born with the sales gene, the folks who interpret the word “no,” even when backed by a slammed door, as an invitation to negotiate.

Every community needs a sales person like Beale, someone who can motivate fellow citizens and tap into that deep reservoir of generosity hidden beneath a thin layer of public apathy and cynicism.

Windsor, without a Mike Beale, would be a city with less awareness of its illustrious past and less gratitude for its veterans. In other words, a city with less heart.

Ironically, this huge Windsor booster happens to be a longtime Tecumseh resident, which reminds us just how artificial those civic boundaries are.

He cringes at the “I” word. It’s always about “we” the team working in unison to meet an objective. But Beale’s organizing motivational and fund raising fingerprints are all over a bunch of projects undertaken in this city.

He was a key early player in the monumental, ongoing effort to restore the Mosquito bomber that was recovered from an Arctic swamp in 1996. He played an instrumental role in persuading the city to allow a deteriorating civic heirloom, the Lancaster bomber, to be moved from its Jackson Park plinth to a Windsor Airport hangar where a complex restoration project is ongoing.

Appalled by the condition of a monument in Dieppe, France, honouring the immense sacrifices of the Essex Scottish Regiment in the disastrous Aug. 19, 1942 Dieppe Raid, he spearheaded campaigns that led to the installation of an inspiring black granite monument on the French beach and an exact replica in Dieppe Gardens.

Distressed by the dismal state of Windsor’s Remembrance Day ceremonies, Beale put his showman instincts to work. He led an overhaul, including a better sound system, improved traffic control, a military fly-past, cannon salutes and children’s choirs, that has made those cenotaph gatherings memorable.

He’s been deeply involved in the campaign to erect a Memorial Spitfire replica in Essex honouring late fighter pilot ace Jerry Billings along with a stone wall bearing the names of more than 1,400 Essex County residents who served in the RCAF and RAF during the Second World War.

All that, and now the $300,000 that he and his fellow team members must raise to make the Great Canadian Flag at the foot of Ouellette Avenue a reality.

What drives him? In the beginning, said Beale, it was all about “the gear”, the great aircraft and those amazing Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. As a horsepower nut, he was drawn to those early projects.

In the process he met a lot of veterans, got hooked on them and their sacrifices and became determined to honour them.

Above all, he remembers Bob Upcott, the humble, soft-spoken pilot of Bad Penny, the Lancaster bomber that led Operation Manna, the risky, low-flying 1945 mission to drop food to the starving residents of occupied Holland.

When Upcott was dying of cancer, Beale would drop by with an ice cream cone. Upcott, in a more than fair exchange, provided the single malt scotch.

“I feel Bob’s presence after all these years. He’s the guy who focused me on veterans instead of their gear,” said Beale.

He’s still a salesman. Always will be. But now he markets Canadian pride and civic remembrance, products that sell themselves.

Beale sees his role as an easy one: “What I do is seek out people who are smarter, better looking and more capable than me and glom onto them.” It’s a darn shame we can’t clone this guy.

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